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Platform Highlight: Flexible Payment Options

May 11, 2020

Two options for setting up your payment: purchase orders or credit cards.

You’ve likely heard the term cash is king when it comes to businesses managing their finances, but how does that actually translate into your everyday operations? At the end of the day, if you’re bringing in more money than you spend, you’re probably in great shape. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to improve or manage your cash flow better.

When you’re managing travel for your work crew, you may have to consider the logistics of getting them to/from their worksites, finding suitable accommodations, reconciling costs, and often invoicing your accommodation costs to someone else and then waiting for them to pay you. And if you need to track the costs by associated projects or subcontractors, there might be a juggling act when it comes to funds in and out.

Credit Card

Companies with only a handful of travellers or crews that travel infrequently may find that paying with a credit card is a simpler option. Some corporate credit cards offer cashback and other perks that companies can utilize and there’s no need to set up LodgeLink as a vendor in your internal systems. You can still book and manage your crew accommodations in the platform, benefitting from a central tool and reduced rates. You will receive consolidated invoices, but you will not have the ability to track your accommodation spend by projects or cost-tracking codes, this will have to be tracked by you manually.

Applying for Credit With LodgeLink

With this method of payment, you complete a credit application and LodgeLink will let you know how much you’ve been approved for. Your company’s accommodations are initially paid for by LodgeLink and once the stay has completed, we will send you a consolidated invoice based on your billing preferences. While it does require you to set up LodgeLink as a vendor in your system for payment, this method allows you to better manage your cash flow as you do not need to pay for the stays upfront. It also reduces the risk of maxing out your company credit cards. If you have large crews and multiple projects, this also gives you the ability to track your accommodations using Cost Tracking Codes that simplify your accounting and administration and save significant time.

PAYMENT OPTIONS	PROS	CONS
Credit Card	Simple account set up Earn credit card rewards/points No need to set LodgeLink up as a vendor	No tracking by project or cost tracking codes Manual reconciliation Concerns over maxed out credit limits
Applying for credit with LodgeLink	Tracking by project or cost tracking code Reduced administration / reconciliation Better manage cash flow	Additional application during account set up Internal payee set up required